I figured it would be handy to have a sidebar panel that displayed some info (via TAGZ) about the currently playing or currently selected track. This will probably be a little redundant for people with complex/complete playlist displays, but for others that have limited info displayed in their playlist I hope this will be useful to you.

now-playing mode - displays info according to the currently playing track

follow cursor mode - displays info about the focused item in the current playlist

Switch between these modes by either double left-clicking or single middle-clicking on the panel. It also supports drag and drop in both directions: dragging a file over the panel will temporarily show the info for that track, and dropping will display that info until you left click.

You can configure the display for all modes using a single TAGZ formatting string in the preferences. It supports the regular TAGZ and special fields (%_isplaying%,%_ispaused%,%_time_total%,etc), plus a few specific to the panel:

%_trackinfo_mode% a string containing either "Dropped","Follow cursor", or "Now playing" according to the current display mode of the panel.

%_trackinfo_dropped%, %_trackinfo_followcursor%, %_trackinfo_nowplaying%one (and only one) of these strings will be "1" (the others will be an empty string), again depending on the current display mode of the panel (useful for $if functions)

%_trackinfo_notrack%set to "1" when the panel has no track to display (happens when starting up in now-playing mode)

To get a line-break use $char(10). You can also change the alignment of a single line by putting either $char(1)C or $char(1)R at the very start of the line, where the C and R stand for Centered and Right (left aligned is the default). Below I have included the script responsible for the above screenshot, so check that out if you are unsure. Obviously you'd want some technical info displayed, but that is just an example. Most of you guys are much better at this than I am anyway.

Also, could you add a "word wrap" feature? This would be really useful for displaying lyrics, as the lines tend to get clipped. Also a vertical scrollbar would also be nice when the displayed info doesn't fit...

Great plugin so far.But it would be even usefuller to me, if one could add it to the toolbar. Is this possible?Thanks

Preferences->Display->Columns UI->Other->List all toolbars

Edit: Phi, could you please add support for $tab() ?Edit2: And maybe make "dynamic info" optional? Display is flickering from time to time, and I suppose it's wasting some CPU cycles too when you don't have animations. Just a thought...

Phi, thanks for this great UIE! Been waiting for this ever since panel support was added to Columns UI.

Request: Besides now playing and follow cursor modes, could you add an additional mode that automatically switches to now playing mode when a track is currently playing and back to follow cursor when no track is playing?

Also, could you add a "word wrap" feature? This would be really useful for displaying lyrics, as the lines tend to get clipped. Also a vertical scrollbar would also be nice when the displayed info doesn't fit...

Thanks. Heh. I just updated uie_tabs. Word wrap is a possibility. Technically, you could do it with TAGZ, but the code required gets a bit repetitive. Scrollbar maybe, it would need a bit of a redesign to support that though.

QUOTE (upNorth @ Nov 14 2004, 04:10 AM)

Edit: Phi, could you please add support for $tab() ?Edit2: And maybe make "dynamic info" optional? Display is flickering from time to time, and I suppose it's wasting some CPU cycles too when you don't have animations. Just a thought...

Btw: Thanks for making yet another plugin/panel

Yep. I'd planned $tab support for this release, but ran into a few problems. I'll see if I can fix it. And I'll add disabling dynamic info to my todo as well. There is also something I need to try to eliminate of the flickering (not sure if it will make a difference though).

QUOTE (jokull @ Nov 14 2004, 04:55 AM)

EDIT: Suggestion: Double clicking the information area brings up the special info tag editor.

Yes, thats planned (maybe not with double-click though). The executed command will be configurable.

QUOTE (desigrid @ Nov 14 2004, 06:59 AM)

Request: Besides now playing and follow cursor modes, could you add an additional mode that automatically switches to now playing mode when a track is currently playing and back to follow cursor when no track is playing?

Yeah, I could do that. It'll probably take the form of an option in the preferences to "switch to follow cursor mode when no track is playing." Just to confirm, would you want changing playlist focus to never affect the currently displayed track while a song is playing? Or would you want the displayed track to change when a new song starts, but also allow a change in playlist focus to affect the displayed track?

EDIT: actually, you'd want to be able to switch to and from that mode without going into the prefs, right?

Just to confirm, would you want changing playlist focus to never affect the currently displayed track while a song is playing? Or would you want the displayed track to change when a new song starts, but also allow a change in playlist focus to affect the displayed track?